[microformats-discuss] microformats vs. plain XML formats

[Tantek Ç elik]

On 7/13/05 8:29 AM, "Danny Ayers" <danny.ayers at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 7/13/05, Tantek Çelik <tantek at cs.stanford.edu> wrote:
> 
>> Microformats are a very similar evolutionary reaction to the prescribed
>> methods of generic XML or RDF.
> 
> If you're talking about the use of the RDF/XML format, then I'd
> probably have to agree.

Yes.  In typical conversation, especially in the context of the web, when
people mention RDF, they mean the (predominant RDF/XML) format.


> But the RDF model solves at least one problem
> that isn't addressed by generic XML or microformats, how to integrate
> data from different sources and different domains in a useful fashion.

At least attempts to address, but I really don't want to get into that
argument.  I've seen people be successful building their own internal
systems this way, and I've seen people struggle.  I leave it to you and
everybody else to pick whatever internal model works best for you.  I don't
think that is something we have to agree on, and arguing about it will only
be counterproductive.

I think we can have microformat discussions independent of any given
internal model.

Through discussions with you Danny, and numerous other folks like Dave
Beckett and many other SemWeb folks at WWW2005, I'm fully convinced that you
can map microformats into RDF if that is what you wish to do.  So for all
the power that affords you, more power to you.

I also know that for some folks, who want to only do a few simple things,
they don't need that power, and so they may use microformats directly with a
database.  Perhaps limited, but that is ok.  Perhaps that's all they need.


> You know I couldn't leave that one unchallenged ;-)

It was not meant to be a challenge, I apologize for that.

Tantek